Valentino Rossi's career in MotoGP ended yesterday, after 9 world championships and over twenty years of career.

Yesterday was a historic day for the World Championship. Valentino Rossi has decided to hang his gloves on the wall and to cover the last kilometers of his motorcycle career.

A career that began in 1996 in the 125 class and which led him to win 9 world championships . 25 years of world championship history that is equivalent to a quarter of a century. He changed several bikes, starting from Aprilia to join Honda in 2000 and Yamaha in 2004, up to the Italian dream Ducati in 2011 to then return to Yamaha from 2013 on a permanent basis.

Its data and statistics are something of a legend. 9 world championships won with 432 races and 111 races won. In total he scored 6357 points, with 65 pole positions and 96 fastest laps.

He was a driver who gave his all on the sporting side but also on the communication side. His duels with Capirossi, Biaggi and Gibernau in the first phase of his career were legendary and then continued with Stoner, Lorenzo and Marc Marquez.

A driver who has also set up on his own and who has been the owner of the Sky Racing Team VR46 since 2014. A son of art as his father was also a motorcycle rider between the 70s and 80s.

With this curly hair he has created something that probably no one in the course of the World Championship has been able to do. Taking advantage of the development of media technologies, he managed to be a character and a reference driver for many other pilots.

Since announcing his decision to retire in the middle of this year, all Grand Prixs have seen a tribute to the great driver. In yesterday's Valencia Grand Prix, a mega mural was also created in the paddock of the Valencia circuit.

During his last Grand Prix he recorded a tenth place which for a 42-year-old driver is something truly exceptional. The riders of 20 or 25 years have covered the last kilometers with him and even a single year can weigh on a sport like MotoGP.

Petitions had arrived online to get him on the podium, in order to have one last Valentino Rossi to celebrate ... but in the end the sport went on. The MotoGP riders, however, decided to give him a mega hug in one of the first corners at the end of the race. A group of riders was therefore created who, after revving up, said goodbye to the races to Valentino Rossi.

He went to greet them one by one, creating something very emotional. He was also the last driver to leave the track to go inside the pit lane. Not only his friends were waiting for him, but all those people who made this driver special. In addition to the partner (and soon mom), there were all those people who have a little piece of Valentino Rossi in their minds and hearts. We are talking about all the commentators, but also about the riders of the Valentino Rossi academy.

We don't like making comparisons and establishing whether Valentino Rossi is better or better than Marc Marquez or D'agostini. It doesn't matter to define which rider was the greatest in the entire history of motorcycling. What matters is to thank Valentino once again for being able to give us emotions over these 25 years.

Every time he won a world championship it was a party and it was a choreography created ad hoc by his friends from Tavullia. A boy with a small physique who was too big for 125 and who immediately made the leap into the two most important classes.

The son of a land, Romagna, which has given and is giving a whole series of talents that keep Italian honor high.

Valentino is not simply a rider who has won 9 world championships, but he is a rider who has revolutionized the appeal of the World Championship. His overtaking at Laguna Seca was unforgettable, which literally made all the fans jump on the couch.

A career made up of less brilliant years and with some disappointments. We also want to remember the very sad moment of the death of Marco Simoncelli, a great friend of Valentino Rossi. We clearly do not know now what the races between Valentino Rossi and Marco Simoncelli would have been, if the latter had not stumbled on enormous misfortune. Probably they would have given us overtaking and braking impossible to forget.

In the end, the MotoGP riders are superheroes. They manage to do something that the imaginations of ordinary people can at times imagine. Watching the latter speed through the tracks at insane speeds, we all think we can emulate these gestures. The truth is that 99.99% of us wouldn't even be able to do 100 meters with MotoGP bikes.

When they take off their helmets at the end of the race, they are exhausted, starting with the kids riding the Moto3, right up to the MotoGP riders.

Valentino Rossi has covered all these classes, leaving a memory and a sign in each of them that will remain for many years. We are talking at the end of a character who can be compared to Pele or Maradona in football, or Michael Jordan in basketball.

When we say Valentino Rossi we mean a person who has given a lot in the World Championship and who hopefully can continue to tell this incredible world as a manager or entrepreneur of a Racing Team for many years to come.

We do not know exactly all the plans that Valentino Rossi has in mind other than those of participating in car races, another great passion of his.

Ultimately, dreams are meant to be cultivated in secret and revealed only when they are certain and completed.

At the end of all this and at the end of this article, we feel like saying only these small and simple but great words. Thanks for everything Vale!

credit photo By motoracereports - Picasa Web Albums, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11044792